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Béchamel

White Sauce is a base for most French dishes. You can prepare a variety of dishes if you have white sauce handy. Here is how I prepare my white sauce, which is generally of medium consistency.

Ingredients

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp All purpose flour / Maida
2 cup Milk

What to do?

Heat a pan. Add butter. As the butter melts. Take it off the heat and add the flour. Mix it well. Once done it will look like bread crumbles. Heat the mixture lightly. Take care that flour doesn’t turn brown. This butter-flour mixture is called roux. It is basically a thickening agent.

To this add milk. Don’t pour it at one shot. You might end up making a lumpy white sauce. The first half cup, add one tbsp after another. Add one tbsp, mix it with the roux using a whisk. Then the next and so on. After the first half cup, add 1/4 cup milk. Keep stirring. Then comes another 1/4 cup milk. Followed by 1/2 cup milk, twice. Boil it till you get the required consistency.

If you want to store the white sauce, transfer the contents into a clean air tight container. Melt a tbsp of butter and pour it on top of the white sauce. This will prevent the top layer of the sauce from hardening. Refrigerate it till required.